21 Weeks

Our wine group has gone mobile! Last week we took a trip to the Santa Barbara Community College's Gourmet Dining Room. The SBCC culinary school is a two year program, and as one of the final classes, all the students work in the kitchen and wait tables for the dining room. So every Thursday and Friday night the public can get a 4-course meal with wine pairings for $40. We've been there 4 times over the last 3 years and the dishes are hit or miss, but the menu is always changing, so it's worth the risk.
An amuse bouche of watermelon with smoke trout skin and a fried sage leaf....

For the first course Brooke had the Fried Oyster Salad and I had the Poached Pear Salad (not shown). For the second course, we had the Lobster Pot Pie and Wild Boar Ravioli with chanterelle mushrooms....

For the third (main) course, Brooke had a large Asian-seasoned Breaded Pork Chop and I had the Roasted Duck Breast with a Veal Stuffed Poblano....

Our wine group's next purposed field trip is to Cafe Firenze in Moorpark, CA. It's run by Fabio, a contestant on Bravo's Top Chef. If we're really lucky, we may actually see the pseudo celeb chef.

Besides the SBCC outing, we haven't done anything even remotely worth writing about. Our lives have been a repeating cycle of working, studying, and eating out. It's a disgusting existence, but one good thing has come from this....we've discovered a good new Vietnamese restaurant. Noodle City, in old town Goleta, offers possible the best pho in the Santa Barbara area (although that's not saying much). They also offer a Chinese menu which Brooke was excited about since she's always craving wonton noodle soup. Although the wonton noodle soup was good, it wasn't made in the style she was used to. It had taken on a distinctly Vietnamese style with the addition of cilantro and fried onion chips. Being only a 5-minute drive from home, this place will certainly be weekly stop (if not more often).

Here's Brooke's belly at 21 weeks. There's no obvious growth since last week, but we've observed a slight formation of a linea nigra (we've learned so many fun new medical terms since the pregnancy).